Jorge Lorenzo wins in Magical Mugello

Jorge Lorenzo won the Italian Grand Prix in “typical” fashion aboard his Ducati Desmosedici GP18, with team-mate Andrea Dovizioso and home favorite Valentino Rossi rounding up the podium places.

The first couple of laps started in drama with several riders going down on the first 2 laps including Jack Miller, Dani Pedrosa, Taka Nakagami, Scott Redding and Tom Luthi, however despite all the drama Jorge Lorenzo stayed consistent at the front after taking the hole-shoot into turn 1 from pole man Valentino Rossi, going into turn 2 Marc Marquez rode into the side of Danilo Petrucci who fortunately stayed on but it had slight shades of Termas De Rio Hondo.

On lap 3 Marc Marquez made a clean move on Valentino Rossi to take second place, however 1 lap later the championship leader fell off in turn 10 and not managing to do one of his infamous saves, he got back on all be it in last position and seriously damaging his championship lead.

Mid race we saw an excellent battle between Valentino Rossi, Andrea Iannone, Danilo Petrucci and Alex Rins all fighting for the final step on the podium, with some fantastic and hard moves it was a battle that griped fans and track side viewers a like, one person who did not feature in this battle was Maverick Vinales who yet again got beaten up on the first lap and falling down to 10th position.

Yet again he had excellent late race pace coming back into the podium fight pulling Angle Nieto Team rider Alvaro Bautista along with him, although he got on the back of the podium battle he was unable to make any impression into the group of 5 men finishing the Grand Prix in 8th position.

4 laps from the end Danilo Petrucci got his spectacular liveried Alma Pramac Ducati’s feathers ruffled when Valentino Rossi and Andrea Iannone passed him into turn 1, 1 lap later Alex Rins also passed him. However running in P3 for a long time in this race has yet again given him a valid argument as to why Ducati Factor Team should employ him for next season.

Jorge Lorenzo could be easily forgotten out front as he in his old usual fashion took a tenth here and there top open up a 6.3 second lead on Andrea Dovizioso, Dovizioso may have seemed to of rolled off a bit to much on the last lap as t was evident that Valentino Rossi was a lot closer than had originally appeared however Dovizioso was able to hold on to second place making it a dream Ducati Team 1-2 .

Emotional scenes as Jorge Lorenzo entered pit lane with teams from Moto3/2 and MotoGP all lined the pit lane to congratulate him on his way to parc ferme, in the press conference Jorge Lorenzo said “I said yesterday it would be a dream, and finally I did it, I did it with determination and finally I got some pieces, some pieces that gives me this confidence and I demonstrated it, what I said was true and I won, I won my first race with Ducati”

With the championship now hitting a critical stage with already being just over half way through the first half of the season we look to Catalunya to provide the next piece of the puzzle in this gripping world championship.